Before you submit your thesis or dissertation, you should review the manuscript templates below to see models of Graduate Studies formatting requirements. For more information about formatting, we encourage you to visit our Formatting Guidelines page or attend one of your upcoming Manuscript Workshops.

Graduate Studies requires the title and abstract pages in manuscripts to follow the same format for consistency across all theses and dissertations.

Your title page should be on the first page of your manuscript with the lower case roman numeral I, and you can use the title page template to create your own title page for your manuscript. You can either download a copy of this Word template to edit directly; or you may create a title page in your manuscript document (such as LaTeX) that follows the same format.

Title page template (Word)

You may also review the title page description (page 1) and example (page 2) in the document below to see a model of the title page formatting.

Title page description and example (Word)

Your abstract page should be after your title page and/or acknowledgements and before your table of contents. You can either download a copy of this Word template to edit directly; or you may create an abstract page in your manuscript document (such as LaTeX) that follows the same format.

Abstract page template (Word)

You may also review the abstract page description (page 1) and example (page 2) in the document below to see a model of the abstract page formatting.

Abstract page description and example (Word)

Your manuscript should have sections in the following order:

Front Matter

• Title page (starts on page i)
• Acknowledgements and/or dedication (optional)
• Abstract
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures (if applicable)
• List of Tables (if applicable)

Body

Reference Materials

• Appendices
• References/Bibliography/Works Cited

Sample dissertation 

Sample thesis